From the atlas
Tenuta Licinia
A Belgian lawyer's Tuscan estate near Lucignano, where galestro limestone and careful parcel work give Cabernet Sauvignon and Sangiovese a floral, graphite-edged character distinct from the classical Tuscan style.
At A Glance
| |
| Region | Tuscany, Val di Chiana |
| Village | Lucignano (near Siena and Arezzo) |
| Main grapes | Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Sangiovese |
| Signature wine | Sasso di Fata |
| Defining feature | Galestro soils; individual-berry sorting; light extraction across all wines |
The Producer
In the Val di Chiana, midway between Siena and Arezzo, a Belgian lawyer named Jacques de Liedekerke bought a 61-hectare estate in the 1970s and named it after the Roman name for the nearby village of Lucignano. Most of those hectares are forest. The vines occupy the south-facing slopes, rooted in galestro, a rocky clay marl indigenous to the Apennines that appears in some of the best-regarded sites in Tuscany.
The estate now operates under de Liedekerke's grandson James Marshall-Lockyer, who took up winemaking in 2020 after completing a doctorate in philosophy at Oxford. His first vintage was 2021. The wines are bottled under the Toscana IGT designation and grouped by geology and bunch quality, with Sasso di Fata and Onda occupying the top single-vineyard category.
Place
The Val di Chiana is an ancient Etruscan valley. Tenuta Licinia sits near Lucignano, adjacent to the Castello di Calcione, roughly halfway between Siena and Arezzo. This position keeps the estate outside the best-known Tuscan appellations, but the galestro soils it works are the same rocky, well-drained marl that give their best to vineyards further west in Chianti Classico.
The vineyards face south. The exposure and the thin, freely draining galestro direct vine energy into the fruit rather than into leaf and stem, and they create the mineral and graphite qualities the producer identifies as signatures of the Sasso di Fata site in particular.
Soil And Site
Galestro is a fractured clay marl, pale-coloured and full of stone. It sheds water quickly, so the vines push roots deep to find moisture, and the nutrient scarcity keeps yields in check. The rocky subsoil is where the producer traces Sasso di Fata's graphite and saline qualities: the fractured stone character comes through directly in the wine's mineral frame.
The vines are planted at 6,200 per hectare and trained to spur-pruned cordon and Guyot. At that density the canopy stays open, light penetrates the fruit zone, and sorting at harvest becomes more meaningful because each vine carries less.
Story
Jacques de Liedekerke bought the Lucignano estate in the 1970s, drawn to a corner of Tuscany that carried Etruscan history and a Roman name already attached to the land. The decision to make wine there was a long-term investment in a place, not a quick entry into an established appellation.
When de Liedekerke's health declined, his grandson James stepped in. James was partway through a doctoral programme in philosophy at Oxford at the time. He chose the vineyard. He took over selected lots from the 2019 harvest, blended them, and was able to bring the finished wine to his grandfather to taste before he died. That 2019 became the bridge between generations. James formally took on winemaking in 2020, and his first complete vintage was 2021.
Vineyards And Cellar
The planted vineyard covers either 5.5 hectares across four parcels, on the estate's own vineyard page, or 6.5 hectares as described by the importer DBG Italia. The remaining land is forest. The estate has held organic certification since 2012 and has worked biodynamically since 2021, using preparations including valerian, equisetum and chamomile.
Harvest timing is decided by tasting rather than laboratory measurement. Each small parcel is picked and fermented separately, which preserves the site differences before any blending decisions are made. In the cellar, fermentation temperatures are kept relatively cool, mechanical extraction is light, and macerations are shorter than is typical for the Bordeaux varieties at the top of the range. Sasso di Fata receives individual-berry hand sorting before fermentation.
Oak ageing runs for approximately twelve months across the estate's wines, using large formats only: botti for Sangiovese, and 500-litre vessels or botti for the Bordeaux varieties. After oak, the wines spend a further six to twelve months in concrete tanks. The official wine page for Sasso di Fata specifies ten months in 500-litre oak at 22% new oak, followed by approximately seven months in concrete.
Wines
The range is organised by geology and bunch quality. At the top, Sasso di Fata and Onda are single-vineyard selections from the best parcels and the best bunches within them. Below that tier sits Montepolli, a red that draws on the estate's Bordeaux varieties. L'Isolato is made entirely from Sangiovese and moves on a silkier, more aromatic path than the Cabernet-led wines.
Sasso di Fata is built around Cabernet Sauvignon, with Cabernet Franc contributing to the blend. The wine's tannins come from the grape and the galestro subsoil rather than from heavy oak exposure, and the short, cool maceration keeps the extraction moderate. L'Isolato, by contrast, brings Sangiovese's red-fruit aromatic character and a quieter tannin frame, described in a recent tasting as silky rather than muscular.
In The Glass
Across the range, Tenuta Licinia wines tend toward moderate extraction and mineral definition rather than density or warmth. The galestro leaves a thread of graphite and a saline edge that runs through even the fruitier bottles.
Sasso di Fata departs from what the producer describes as the classical Tuscan Cabernet Sauvignon style, which runs toward black fruit and balsamic character. Instead, rose and rosehip carry the nose, with graphite and saline notes in the background. The palate reflects the cool, short maceration: the tannins are present without being thick, and the wine keeps acidity rather than alcohol at the fore. A comparative tasting of the 2021 and 2022 vintages showed meaningful vintage difference: the 2021 leaned toward mineral expression and quieter fruit, while the 2022 was riper-fruited and more youthfully tense.
L'Isolato shows Sangiovese's aromatic side: a red-fruit and floral register, a silk-textured palate, and a finish that relies on aromatic lift rather than tannin grip.
A Bottle To Understand It
Sasso di Fata is the bottle that shows what the estate's galestro soils and light-extraction approach actually produce. It is a Cabernet Sauvignon-led wine from the top single-vineyard tier, sorted berry by berry at harvest, fermented cool and briefly macerated, then aged in 500-litre oak and concrete. In the glass it opens with rose and rosehip rather than the blackcurrant and cedar that most Tuscan Cabernet delivers, and the finish carries a mineral, graphite edge sourced from the subsoil. The 2022 is the ripest and most immediate of the available vintages; the 2021, if it can be found, shows the wine in a more mineral and taut register.
Anecdote
The estate's first vintage was 2013, but hail came before anyone could bottle it properly. The storm was violent enough to pull fish from a nearby lake and scatter them across the vineyard. The crop survived in name only: forty bottles came from that year, which was not enough to call a commercial release. The fish story remained, passed along by James Marshall-Lockyer as the founding disaster that set expectations low before the actual work began.
Final Word
Tenuta Licinia makes Cabernet Sauvignon and Sangiovese from galestro soils in a quiet corner of Tuscany and arrives at wines that smell of rose, graphite and minerality rather than the balsamic and black-fruit warmth the region is usually known for. The estate is small, the history is recent, and the direction is now firmly in James Marshall-Lockyer's hands.
Sources
- https://tenutalicinia.com/pages/vineyard
- https://tenutalicinia.com/pages/viticulutre-and-winemaking
- https://tenutalicinia.com/pages/wines
- https://dbgitalia.com/producer/tenuta-licinia/
- https://www.crushedgrapechronicles.com/tenuta-licinia-identitarian-wines-of-tuscany/
- https://tenutalicinia.com/pages/sasso-di-fata-licinia
- https://tenutalicinia.com/pages/sasso-di-fata
- https://www.falstaff.com/en/wines/tenuta-licinia-2022-sasso-di-fata-toscana-rosso-igt-1
- https://somminthecity.com/tenuta-licinia-the-soul-of-tuscany-through-stone-and-soil/